The _North American Review_ for the July quarter is in many respects

characteristic. Six months after every Review published in Great

Britain had had its paper on Southey, and when the subject is quite

worn out, the _North American_ furnishes us with a leading article

upon it, in which there is neither an original thought nor a new

combination of thoughts that are old. Colton's _Public Economy_ gives

a title to an article, in which the book is treated superciliously,

and some ideas by Henry C. Carey are presented as the original

speculations of the reviewer. It is deserving of remark that the _Past

and Present_, and more recent works of Mr. Carey, which among thinking

men throughout the world have commanded more attention than any other

writings in political philosophy during the last five years, have

never been even referred to in this periodical, which arrogates to

itself the leadership of American literature. The eighth article of

the number is on the Unity of the Human Race, and considering the

place it occupies in the _North American Review_, for July, 1851, it

is contemptible. It is based on five publications made in England

previous to 1847, and ignores all the research and discussion since

that time, notwithstanding the facts that the subject never was so

amply, so profoundly, or so luminously discussed as during the last

year--that the very writers referred to in the article have for the

chief part published their most important treatises upon it since

1847--that within six months its literature has received large

accessions in France, Germany, and Italy,--and that in _our own

country_, of whose intellectual advancement this Review is bound to

give some sort of an index, the four years since Latham's "Present

State and Recent Progress of Ethnological Philosophy" appeared, have

furnished important works by Albert Gallatin, Mr. Hale of the

Exploring Expedition, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, the Rev. Dr. Smyth, and

several others, all of which should have been considered in any new,

especially in any American _resume_ of the discussion. Johnston's

_Notes on North America_ is treated with a spleen excited by the

author's refusal to recognize the greatness assumed for certain

persons connected with Harvard College, and Mr. Bowen is weak enough

to say, or to permit a contributor to say, "we _understand_(!) Mr.

Johnston has a high reputation," &c. Pish! And what does the reader

suppose is the theme--the fresh, before unheard-of theme--of another

paper? what new star, in the heaven of mind, demanded most the

exploration and illustration of the _North American Review_, for this

July quarter, in 1851? The best guesser of riddles would not in fifty

years hit upon Mr. Gilfillan's book of rigmarole entitled _The Bards

of the Bible_, but this performance, which had been criticised in

every other quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily, in the English

language, that would descend to it, crowds out the subjects of "great

pith and moment" upon which a periodical of such claims should have

spoken with wise authority.

Our own country is full of suggestive topics for thoughtful, earnest,

and learned men, and it is fit that the closet should send out its

instruction to calm the turbulence awakened by tempests from the

rostrum--that affairs should be subjected to the criticism of

experience, and that what is new in discovery, in opinion, or in

suggestion, should have quick and popular recognition and justice. We

need--we must have--for this purpose a powerful and really national

_Review_, to reflect and guide the life and aspirations of the

country.

* * * * *

We mentioned some time ago that Mr. WILLIAM W. STORY, a son of the

late Justice Story, was preparing for the press a life of his father,

and we now understand that the work will soon be ready, in two large

octavo volumes, to be published by Little & Brown. It will come too

late. Such a memoir would have been very well received any time within

a year after Judge Story's death: now the public mind is settled in an

unalterable conviction that Judge Story was an over-rated man, and a

consideration of the processes by which his fame was acquired is

likely for a long time to sink it below its just level. We but echo

the opinion of more than one eminent person connected with the very

school in which he was a teacher, as well as the common judgment of

the leading men of the profession in all the states, when we say that

Judge Story was not a great lawyer; two or three of his books were

good, but the rest were made for cash profits, and sold by means of

ingenious advertising. Now they will answer for the country courts,

and the inferior courts of the cities, where no opposing lawyer has

enough wit and knowledge to oppose Story against Story, but they are

no longer weighty authorities, and every term they are found to be of

declining influence. As a man of letters, Judge Story's rank will be

still lower. He has left nothing to carry his name into another age.

Yet he was a man of much professional learning, of taste, sagacity, an

extraordinary command of his resources, and a most amiable and

pleasing character, and his memoirs and correspondence, if fitly

presented, will constitute an attractive and valuable contribution to

the history of American society.

* * * * *

For several years it has been known to many students of our early

history, that Mr. LYMAN C. DRAPER was devoting his time and estate,

and faculties admirably trained for such pursuits, to the collection

of whatever materials still exist for the illustration of the lives of

the Western Pioneers. He has carefully explored all the valley of the

Mississippi, under the most favorable auspices--by his intelligence

and enthusiasm and large acquaintance with the most conspicuous

people, commended to every family which was the repository of special

traditions or of written documents--and he has succeeded in amassing a

collection of MS. letters, narratives, and other papers, and of

printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and journals, more extensive than

is possessed by many of the state historical societies, while in

character it is altogether and necessarily unique. He proposes soon to

publish his first work, _The Life and Times of General George Rogers

Clarke_, (whose papers have been long in his possession, and whose

surviving Indian fighters and other associates he has personally

visited), in two octavo volumes, to be followed by shorter historical

memoirs of Colonel Daniel Boone, General Simon Kenton, General John

Sevier of East Tennessee, General James Robertson, Captain Samuel

Brady, Colonel William Crawford, the Wetzells, &c., &c. The field of

his researches, it will be seen, embraces the entire sweep of the

Mississippi, every streamlet flowing into which has been crimsoned

with the blood of sanguinary conflicts, every sentinel mountain

looking down to whose waves has been a witness of more terrible and

strange vicissitudes and adventures than have been invented by all the

romancers.

* * * * *

The _Dublin University Magazine_ is not very kind in the matter of the

American poem of _Frontenac_, but suggests that as the author's name

is STREET, he cannot object to being "walked into."

* * * * *

MRS. SOUTHWORTH'S story of _Retribution_ is being republished in

_Reynolds's Miscellany_, edited by G. W. M. Reynolds, the novelist.

Those who are acquainted with the productions of Reynolds will perhaps

recognize the fitness of the association.

* * * * *

MRS. MOWATT, who has just returned from a professional residence in

England, we understand will soon give the public a collection of her

miscellaneous writings, prefaced by Mary Howitt. The authoress of _The

Fortune Hunter_, under various signatures, has been a very voluminous

as well as a very clever writer. She will in a few weeks appear at the

Broadway Theatre.

* * * * *

MISS BEECHER has published (through Phillips & Sampson of Boston), her

_True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women_, and the book is much below her

reputation. From a person of her character and unquestionable

abilities, we looked for a rebuke of those females who have unsexed

themselves, such a rebuke as should have brought to life all the

latent shame in their natures, and for ever prevented any renewals of

the melancholy displays they have made of an unfeminine passion for

notoriety. The "wrongs of woman," in the state of New-York at least,

are purely ideal; here woman has all the privileges and protections

compatible with her destined offices in a civilized society. She

undoubtedly has a share of the sufferings to which human nature is

subject, but has literally nothing to complain of at the hands of man

in the social organization. The individual wrongs of which she is the

victim, are for the most part penalties of individual indiscretions,

and the remedy for them is to be found in the education of woman for

her proper sphere and duties, such education as shall develope her

capacities for the relations of domestic life, most of all, for

maternity. Miss Beecher treats parties with respect who are entitled

to no respect, acknowledges evils which do not exist, and proposes for

the elevation of female character plans of very questionable

influence.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] WIESELER, FRIEDRICH. Theatergebaeude und Denkmaler des

Buhnenwesens, beiden Gricchen und Roemern. Goettingen, 1851. Vandenhoeik

und Ruprecht.

_The Fine Arts._

All Europe abounds in memorials of illustrious men, and in the present

time there is more than ever before a disposition manifested to

consecrate art to the honor of the benefactors of mankind, or to those

who have been most eminent for great qualities. From Munich, we learn

by the latest journals, that two colossal statues--those of Gustavus

Adolphus and of the Swedish poet Tegner--have just been cast at the

royal foundry of that capital, with complete success. Both were

modelled by Schwanthaler, and are destined for public places in the

city of Stockholm. In France, the inhabitants of Andelys have been

inaugurating a statue of Nicolas Poussin, with great ceremonial. On

the same day a statue to Poisson, an eminent mathematician, was

inaugurated with pomp, at his native place, Pithiviers, near Orleans.

A little before, one was erected to Froissart, the quaint old

chronicler of knightly deeds, at Valenciennes, where he was born.

Jeanne Hachette is about to have one at Beauvais; Gresset, the author

of '_Vert Vert_', at Amiens; and the village of Rollot, in Picardy,

has just caused to be placed in its public square a bust of the

translator into French of the _Thousand and One Nights_, Antony

Galland. He was sent by Colbert to the East on account of his great

knowledge of the Hebrew and other oriental languages, and on his

return published the Arabian Nights, and a treatise on the origin of

coffee.

There is, in fact, scarcely a Frenchman of real eminence in poetry,

literature, war, science, statesmanship, or the arts, who is not

honored with a statue, either in his birthplace, or in the town made

his own by adoption. Most of the statues are erected at the expense of

the respective localities; the good people thinking it a duty to

render every respect to their illustrious dead. And when they happen

to be too poor to incur much cost, they erect a fountain, or some

other useful work, which bears the great man's name. In the small and

poor village of Chatenay, near Paris, where Voltaire was born, you

see, for example, a small plaster bust of him, in an iron cage, and on

the parish pump the words "a Voltaire." And, as the _Literary Gazette_

has it, very justly, "the man who should scoff at this simple tribute

to genius would be an ass,--it is all that poor peasants can afford to

pay." The names of distinguished men are also frequently given by the

French to streets and squares. In Paris alone, Moliere, Racine,

Corneille, Voltaire, Boileau, Montaigne, and I know not how many

others, together with men of science by the hundred, have streets

named after them: so have Chateaubriand and Beranger; so have even the

English Lord Byron and the Italian Rossini. The ships in the navy,

too, receive also the names of distinguished men, foreign as well as

native--there is a man-of-war named after Newton, and several public

works have the name of our own Franklin. But in the United States,

although we have sometimes named after soldiers and statesmen, we have

scarce any monuments, and no statues at all, except a few of men

distinguished in affairs. In Union Square, opposite the house in which

he lived, there should be a statue of the great Chancellor Kent; in

Richmond, one of Marshall, next to Washington, the greatest of

Virginians; in Northampton, one to Jonathan Edwards; in New Haven, one

to Timothy Dwight; before the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, one

to Franklin, one to Rittenhouse, and one to Alex. Wilson; at

Cambridge, one to Allston; in Boston, one to Bowditch; and in

New-York, memorials of some sort to Audubon, Gallatin, Hamilton, &c.

In the new park which is to be reserved in the upper part of the city,

we have an opportunity to commemorate the patriotism and misfortunes

of the first magistrate chosen by the people of New-York, the first

under whom municipal elections were held here, and the first martyr to

Liberty in the New World--Governor Leisler. LEISLER PARK sounds well,

and it has additional fitness from the fact, that the unfortunate

governor was once proprietor of a part of the grounds to be so

appropriated. If it shall not be called Leisler Park, there is another

illustrious New-Yorker, whose name appears to have been forgotten by

those who have given names to public places here,--Governor Colden,

who wrote the _History of the Five Nations_.

* * * * *

When the Emperor of Russia was at Rome, four or five years ago, he

engaged Barberi, the worker in mosaic, to undertake certain large

works, and with the instruction of six Russian students with a view to

the establishment of a great school of mosaic art in St. Petersburgh.

Since that time Barberi and his pupils have been occupied with works

for the imperial residence, the last of which, just completed,

consists of an octagonal mosaic pavement, from the ancient design of

the round hall in the Vatican Museum, with twenty-eight figures, a

colossal head of Medusa in the centre, and a variety of ornaments, all

inclosed in a brilliant wreath of fruits, flowers, and foliage. The

series already executed consist of four scenic masques, each of which

is valued at L5200 sterling. With these finished works Cavaliere

Barberi is about to forward to St. Petersburgh a number of vitreous

mosaic tablets of every shade and style of drawing and decoration, as

models for younger students.

* * * * *

TENERANI, the most eminent of contemporary Italian sculptors, has

finished a statue of Bolivar. The figure is standing, full draped, and

holding a laurel crown in the left hand. The pediment is ornamented

with three bas-reliefs, the three provinces, Peru, Bolivia, and

Colombia. Two statues, Justice and Liberality, symbols of the hero's

virtues, stand at the side of the monument, which will be erected in

the cathedral of Caraccas. It is a fine instance of the beauty and

delicate grace of Tenerani's treatment. The expressive head of "The

Liberator," with the high, arched brow, the large, soft, and sagacious

eyes, the sharply chiselled but agreeable features, beaming with

intellectual radiance, are happily conceived and exquisitely executed.

In the same kind we note an equestrian statue of Bernadotte by

TOGELBERG, a Swede resident in Rome. The horseman's mantle has fallen

aside, the staff of a commander is in his hand, and the able marshal,

"king that shall be," looks graciously down from his horse. In his

face there is the imperial force of military genius, with the genial

grace of sensibility. The horse is finely done.

* * * * *

STEINHAUSER'S statue of Hahnemann, the father of homoeopathy,

destined for Leipsic, is almost finished. The same artist has in hand

the Goethe monument, designed by Bettina von Arnim. The sketch serves

as the illuminated title-page to the second volume of the

correspondence with a child. She describes it as follows: "Goethe sits

upon a throne, within a semi-niche, his head reaches over the niche,

which is not closed above, but is cut away, and seems, half seen, like

the moon rising over the rim of a mountain. The mantle, tied round the

neck, falls back over the shoulders, and is brought forward again

under the arms into the lap. The left hand rests upon the lyre,

supported upon the left knee. The right hand, which holds my flowers,

is sunk negligently in the same way, and, forgetting fame, he holds

the laurel wreath, and looks toward heaven. The young Psyche stands

before him, as then I stood, raises herself upon tip-toe to touch the

strings of the lyre, which he permits, lost in inspiration."

The artist has appreciated this conception. He has represented Goethe

not as an old man, but as a man of ideal expression, holding indeed

the well-won laurel, but with the harp in hand, as if inspiration were

exhaustless.

* * * * *

HERR KISS'S group in bronze of an Amazon encountering a lion has been

purchased by the Prince of Prussia as a present for the Queen of

England. A copy of the same work in zinc has been purchased by a

gentleman from the United States for L2500. It is said that Kiss has

received a commission for two other copies for persons in the United

States.

* * * * *

The English critics complain that they have not any longer a great

portrait painter. This branch of art is declining, and the walls of

the Academy this year bear testimony to the fact. From the death of

Lawrence to the present time, now more than twenty years, it has been

gradually subsiding into the mere record of literal fact--ignoring

those great principles which made it once a means of historical

record. In America we have occasion for no such regrets. Elliot is

equal to any man in the world for a masculine and noble head, and

Hicks and several others would in any country or in any time command

the applause due to great masters.

* * * * *

For three years Mr. PYNE, the landscape painter, has been taking a

series of views in the lake counties of England. The pictures comprise

all the important objects in a tour through the country they

illustrate, treated under a variety of aspects, which renders the

collection valuable in an artistic point of view. A feeling for

atmospheric distance is one of Mr. Pyne's most important attributes,

and in representing wide reaching views of mountains and lakes he has

had full scope for his talent. The pictures are to be copied in a

series of colored lithographs, and published in a volume.

* * * * *

Among the pictures in the Royal Academy this season are several by

British army officers on foreign duty. By the Hon. Lieutenant Colonel

Percy there are, _A Study of Niagara from the under Horse-Shoe Fall,

The River St. Lawrence and Mouth of the Saguenay_, and a view on the

same river _Near the Chaudiere Bridge, Quebec_.

* * * * *

RAUCH, the sculptor, whose statue of Frederic the Great has just been

erected in Berlin, has been the object of an artistic ovation. The

Academy of Sciences gave a banquet in his honor, the king, royal

family, and ministers assisted, and Meyerbeer composed a _Cantata_ for

the occasion.

* * * * *

Mr. HEALY'S picture of Mr. Webster replying to Colonel Hayne is

completed, in Paris, and will be brought to New-York in the present

month (of August). It is twenty-eight feet long. The painter has

published proposals for engravings of it, at twenty dollars per copy.

* * * * *

An original painting by Raphael, _The Boar Hunt_, was destroyed in a

recent fire at Downhill House, the family seat of Sir Hervey Bruce, in

England.

* * * * *

The French and English journals mention several important improvements

of the daguerreotype, some of which are of the same character as Mr.

Hill's. Mr. Brady, of this city, has gone to London, to establish a

branch of his house in that city.

_Historical Review of the Month._

THE UNITED STATES.

On the 4th of July the corner stone of the Capitol extension at

Washington was laid, before the President of the United States, the

Cabinet, army and navy officers, and a very large assemblage of

citizens. Mr. Webster delivered on the occasion an address, in which

he pointed out with his customary eloquent clearness the extraordinary

advances of the country since General Washington, fifty-eight years

before, had performed there a similar duty, and for the advantage of

condensation and exactness he presented many important facts in the

form of a comparative table, as follows:

1793. 1851.

Number of States 15 31

Representatives and Senators in

Congress 135 295

Population of the U. States, 1850 3,929,328 23,267,498

Do. Boston, do. 18,038 136,871

Do. Baltimore, do. 13,503 169,054

Do. Philadelphia, do. 42,520 409,045

Do. New-York (city), do. 33,121 515,507

Do. Washington, do. ---- 40,075

Amount of receipts into Treasury, do. $5,720,624 $43,774,848

Am't of expenditures of U.S., do. 7,529,575 39,355,268

Amount of imports, do. 31,000,000 178,138,318

Do. Exports, do. 26,109,000 151,898,720

Do. Tonnage, do. 525,764 3,535,454

Area of the United States, do. 805,461 3,314,365

Rank and file of the army 5,110 10,000

Militia (enrolled), ---- 2,006,456

Navy of the United States (vessels), None 76

Do. Armament (ordinance), -- 2,012

Number of treaties and conventions

with foreign powers 9 90

Number of lighthouses and light-boats 7 372

Expenditures for do. $12,061 529,265

Area of the first capitol building in

square feet ---- 14,641

Do. present capitol (including extension) ---- 4-1/3 acres

Lines of railroads in miles ---- 8,500

Do. Telegraphs ---- 15,000

Number of post-offices 209 21,551

Number of miles of post route 5,642 178,671

Amount of revenue from post-offices $104,747 $5,552,971

Amount of expenditures in the

Post-Office Department 72,040 5,212,953

Number of miles of mail transportation ---- 46,541,423

Miles of railroad ---- 8,500

Public libraries 35 694

Number of volumes in do. 75,000 2,201,632

School libraries ---- 10,000

Number of volumes in do. ---- $2,000,000

The recent anniversary--being three quarters of a century from the

Declaration of Independence--was celebrated with unusual enthusiasm in

nearly all parts of the United States. One small party of

secessionists in a southern state chose the occasion for some farcical

expressions of treason, and members of another party, equally insane

or wicked, in the north, chose to violate the sacredness of the time

by avowing a disregard of the Constitution; but on the whole the

displays of feeling were such as to gratify a patriotic and hopeful

spirit. The new constitution of Maryland went into effect on that day,

and in obedience to one of its provisions all the persons confined in

its several prisons for debt were then released.

The correspondence between the British Minister and the Secretary of

State respecting the long-pending difficulties in Central America is

not yet concluded. It appears that Great Britain is ready to

relinquish her peculiar relations with the so-called Mosquito Kingdom,

and surrender her control over San Juan; but she refuses to make that

surrender to Nicaragua, which claims an unconditional right in the

case, and refuses to submit to any restrictions. There are other

territorial difficulties between Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the other

states, which seem difficult of adjustment. On these subjects Sir

Henry Bulwer has addressed to the American Government a communication

urging its interference to produce an amicable settlement. Mr. Webster

has left Washington for a temporary residence in the country, and it

is probable that this correspondence will not be concluded until his

return, and the return of the British Minister from a contemplated

visit to London.

It is supposed that an extensive fraud has been committed against the

United States Government in the settlement of Mexican claims. The

person accused, a Dr. Gardner, received a large sum from the Mexican

Commission, but as is now stated, by fraudulent evidence. He is absent

in Europe, but the grand jury of Washington has found a bill against

him, and his brother and another party implicated in the transaction

have been held to bail for perjury.

The Tehuantepec Surveying Expedition has returned to New Orleans.

Surveys, which show the practicability of the railroad route, are

complete. A few parties have been left on the ground to survey a line

for the construction of a carriage road. The Coatzacoatlcos River is

reported navigable, for twenty-five miles above its mouth, for ships

drawing eleven feet of water. The climate is believed to be healthy.

The Mexican government having evinced some unfriendliness to the

Tehuantepec project, the interference of the United States has been

solicited, but declined. The balance of the fourth installment of the

Mexican Indemnity, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was paid at

the U.S. Treasury on the 28th of June--amounting to $1,815,400. The

whole amount of the installment is $3,360,000. The Court Martial

convened at Washington on the 23d June, for the trial of General

Talcott, chief of the ordnance department, has closed its labors by

the conviction of the accused of all the charges preferred against

him, and his dismissal from the service. The charges were: a violation

of the 132d article of the regulations for the government of the

Ordnance Department; wilful disobedience of orders and instructions

from the Secretary of War in relation to a contract for supplies; and

conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, among other things, in

making a declaration which was positively and wilfully false, and

intended to deceive the Secretary of War.

Preparations for the next presidential canvass are being commenced in

many of the States. General Scott has received the nomination of two

state conventions--that of Ohio, and that of Pennsylvania--besides

having been nominated at public meetings in Delaware, Indiana, and

other places. Mr. Woodbury has been nominated in New Hampshire, and

meetings of various degrees of importance have expressed preferences

for other candidates in various parts of the country. The crops of

all sorts are represented as being in a very prosperous condition

throughout all sections: of wheat and potatoes more abundant than ever

before, and of cotton and rice very much better than the drought in

the early part of the season promised. The Extra Session of the

New-York legislature adjourned on the 11th of July, after passing

several important bills. That for the enlargement of the Erie Canal is

a measure of great moment to the industry and commerce of the state.

It provides for the complete enlargement of the Erie Canal within four

years, thus securing the immense business which would else seek other

avenues to the seaboard, and endowing the state with a large revenue

independent of taxes. Chief Justice Bronson, whose political relations

give to his opinions in this case a peculiar value, has published an

elaborate vindication of the bill's constitutionality. The legislature

of New Hampshire adjourned on the 5th of July. The legislature of

Connecticut has also adjourned, having elected no Senator in the place

of Mr. Baldwin. Resolutions approving of the Compromise Measures,

_including the Fugitive Slave Law_, passed the House by a vote of 113

to 35, but in the Senate they were indefinitely postponed. The

Virginia Reform Convention struck out the section of the Constitution

prohibiting the legislature from passing a law to allow the

emancipation of slaves, and inserted a provision that an emancipated

slave remaining in the state over twelve months shall be sold. The

legislature is allowed to impose restrictions on the owners of slaves

who are disposed to emancipate, but the section giving the legislature

power to remove free negroes from the state is stricken out. The

murderers of the Cosden family, in Kent Co., Maryland, are sentenced

to be hung on the first Friday of the present month.

From California we have intelligence to the 15th of June. San

Francisco and Stockton seem to have almost entirely recovered from the

effects of the late conflagrations; the burnt districts were being

restored with a rapidity surpassing all previous examples of

Californian energy, and business, far from being prostrated, had

resumed its former activity. The accounts from the mines continued to

be encouraging, the yield of gold not having been diminished by the

unusual dryness of the winter. The Indian Commissioners have met with

great success in their work of pacification, although there were

rumors of skirmishes in the northern part of the state. A man named

Jennings was lately seized at San Francisco while attempting to escape

with a bag of stolen money, and was, after being arrested and tried by

a self-constituted Vigilance Committee, condemned, brought out into

the plaza, and publicly hung in the presence of a large crowd. A crime

so monstrous may well startle the world. If the persons composing the

Vigilance Committee have respectable positions in society, this fact

but increases the infamy of the transaction, and gives it a more fatal

influence. Every member of the committee, consenting to its action,

should be deemed guilty of murder, and punished as a murderer, though

the magistracy of California should have to invoke for its support in

enforcing the laws the whole force of the nation. There is no safety,

nor true liberty, where there is not obedience; and it had been better

that all the thieves in California in half a century escaped

punishment than that one should be punished in this manner.

In the Mormon territory of Utah ground was broken for the Great Salt

Lake and Mountain Railway on the 1st of May. When this enterprise is

completed, preparations will be more vigorously prosecuted for the

erection of the Temple. The condition of affairs in the new

settlements is represented as encouraging.

The tide of emigration continues to flow into Texas from European

ports. Milam District, on the Upper Brazos, seems at present to be the

favorite point for the colonists. The new town of Kent has lately been

erected at Kimball's Bend, and under the auspices of Captain Sir

Edward Belcher, R.N., made up of hardy English and Scotch settlers.

With the payment of its debt insured by the ten millions received from

the United States, Texas must become one of the most flourishing

states of the Union.

MEXICO.

Recent advices from Mexico lead to apprehensions that the unquiet and

unsettled state of affairs may result in open attempts at a revolution

in the government, and an effort by the partisans of General Santa

Anna to recall him from exile, and place him at the head of the

administration. It is understood that the President has abandoned the

liberal party and allied himself with the clergy. A vigorous newspaper

war is waged against the priests. The Mexican congress is engaged in

devising ways and means to raise the necessary revenue to carry on the

government. The proposition to impose an additional tax of eight per

cent on all foreign merchandise imported into the Republic, has been

adopted by the Chamber of Deputies.

BRITISH AMERICA.

The subject of the clergy reserves, which for a quarter of a century

has almost been constantly debated in Upper Canada, has lately been

agitated with unprecedented earnestness and bitterness. The popular

and English party advocate the appropriation of the funds thus

accruing to purposes of general education. The Board of Trade of

Toronto has passed a vote of censure upon the Council, for having

memorialized the government to impose differential duties against

American manufactures. The census returns for 1850 give the population

of Canada at nearly 800,000. The proceeds of clergy reserve sales,

during the year, were $220,428. In the Legislative Assembly, a series

of resolutions has been moved for the repeal of the union between

Upper and Lower Canada. Efforts are being made to construct a railroad

from Halifax to Hamilton, where it is to join the Great Western road,

constituting a continuous line from Halifax to Detroit.

WEST INDIES.

We have dates of Port-au-Prince to the 30th of June. The coronation of

the Emperor Soulouque will take place very soon. Should no bishop

arrive from Rome, the Emperor may create a native bishop. At the

coronation, a general amnesty is expected for all political exiles,

whose return to Hayti will be beneficial, for among them are men of

wealth and intelligence. The affairs of the country have assumed a

more pacific aspect. Immediately after the recent proclamation of the

Emperor to the Dominicans, several agents were sent to different

points on the frontier, to induce the enemy to enter on amicable

relations. With a single exception, these missions were successful,

and a number of Dominicans were expected in Port-au-Prince, for

purposes of trade. The universal desire of the Haytian people, as well

as of the government, is said to be that the dispute may be honorably

settled. The Emperor, however, has not relinquished the idea of

effecting a reannexation of the territory of Dominica to Hayti. The

excessive issues of Treasury bonds and paper currency are proving

prejudicial to the true interests of the country. The number of

negroes brought to Cuba from the coast of Africa, during the past

fourteen months, is 14,500. Very heavy rains have fallen in the

interior and in the neighborhood of Manzanilla.

SOUTH AMERICA.

In the number of the _Christian Review_ for the July quarter is a very

comprehensive, intelligible, and apparently perfectly correct survey

of the condition of the South American states, to which we refer

readers who would possess more minute information on the subject than

can be embraced in this summary.

The condition of PERU appears favorable for the maintenance of peace

and order. The laws relating to elections, municipal governments, and

other topics connected with the internal affairs of the country, have

been considered by Congress, in accordance with the recommendation of

the President. The election of Gen. Vivanca, the unsuccessful

candidate for the Presidency, as representative in Congress, has been

pronounced invalid, on account of his not holding the rights of

citizenship. The change of ministry was received with satisfaction in

all the departments, except Arequipa, which continued in a state of

disturbance. The Governor's proclamation, requiring that all arms

should be surrendered to the government, was the occasion of a fresh

outbreak. Arequipa was thrown into a state of siege: the streets were

filled with barricades: trenches were constructed at all the avenues

to the city: and every obstacle opposed to the entrance of the troops

which were encamped in the vicinity. Gen. Vivanca, whose party have

caused these disturbances, is in prison at Lima; but whether he is

personally implicated is uncertain.

The Government of BOLIVIA has issued the plan of a new Constitution,

proposing among other measures, the preservation of the Roman Catholic

religion as the religion of the state, the maintenance of amicable

relations with American and European states, the liberty of the press,

the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of opinion on

political subjects, and the protection of foreigners in the exercise

of commercial pursuits. A National Convention has been convoked for

the 16th of July. The number of deputies was to be 53.

An insurrection has taken place in New-Grenada--the two southern

provinces, Pasto and Tuquerres, having united in an attempt to

overthrow the government, with the aid and encouragement of Ecuador.

The President at once dispatched a military force to the scene of the

revolt, but at the last advices it had not succeeded in its object,

though two or three engagements had taken place. The government has

issued proposals for a loan of $400,000 in specie, and unless this is

effected soon, recourse must be had to forced contributions to defray

the expenses of the war. Congress has abolished slavery, requiring

only certain payments to the masters. No disturbance had arisen from

the measure.

GREAT BRITAIN.

In the British Parliament important reforms in the Chancery system are

still under discussion, and Lord Brougham is as ardent a reformer as

he was thirty years ago. The census of Great Britain, taken on the

31st of March last, is a remarkable document. It shows that the small

cluster of the British isles contains a larger population than the

whole of this republic, exclusive of its slaves. The metropolis

numbers upwards of two millions and a quarter, and added to its

denizens during the last ten years about as many souls as New-York now

reckons within its limits. But a more extraordinary and altogether

different result appears in Ireland. It seems that the population of

Ireland is at this moment very little more than six millions and a

half. It is absolutely less than it was in 1821, and more than two

millions short of the number that would have been reached in the

natural order of things, but for the extraordinary occurrences of the

last ten years. So startling a fact will of course become the subject

of the closest inquiries.

The Anti-Papal Bill finally passed the House of Commons, by a large

majority, on the 4th of July. It had previously been amended on the

motion of Sir F. Thesiger, and in spite of the opposition of the

ministers, so as to be much more than the Government had designed.

These amendments make provisions of the bill extend to all Papal bulls

and rescripts, impose a penalty of one hundred pounds upon any who

obtain or publish them, and make it the right of any individual to sue

for the recovery of the fine. The law is stringent, and in America

would be both impolitic and unnecessary. But there is no doubt that

the Lords will adopt the bill, and that it will become the law of the

land. The state of the Church and its abuses have been presented in

the Commons by Mr. Horsman, Sir B. Hall, and Lord Blandford, who

brought up various facts, and contended that a bishop need not have

better pay than a prime minister, that the funds of the establishment

were enough to support an efficient clergy and leave something for

national schools, and that the Church does not supply the spiritual

wants of the people. Such discussions must finally result in the

overthrow of the establishment. Some excitement is caused by an appeal

addressed to the Italians by the authorities at Rome asking for aid to

Roman Catholic missions in London, in which "this great work is most

earnestly recommended to the charity of Italian believers, and to the

zeal of the bishops of Italy." Archbishop Minucci, of Florence, has

also called on the people of his diocese for aid in constructing an

Italian church in London, where "the spiritual wants of the faithful"

may be cared for, and announcing _an indulgence of one hundred days_

for those who shall contribute for this object.

An attempt has been made to prevent the adulteration of coffee with

chicory. It was thought possible to do this by means of a government

inspection, but the motion failed. The Exhibition is still prosperous.

The gross receipts already amount to a million and a half of dollars.

The number of troops in Ireland has, in consequence of the quiet and

improved condition of that country, been reduced from about 26,000 to

the present strength of 18,000 men. The decrees of the Thurles synod,

condemning the Queen's colleges, as institutions "dangerous to faith

and morals," have been sanctioned by the Pope, without any change or

qualifications. Some slight alterations have been made in the statutes

of the synod, respecting matters of ecclesiastical discipline in the

various dioceses; but those which refer to the colleges have been

approved without any modification. The _Cork Constitution_ says,

"There is a great diminution in the number of emigrants proceeding to

America. Only four or five vessels are now at the quays preparing to

leave. It is with difficulty the requisite number of emigrants can be

made up, many preferring to go by Liverpool."

Nearly a hundred Hungarian refugees had arrived at Southampton, from

Constantinople. Lord John Russell has intimated that the Government

will defray the expense of their passage to New-York, and of their

subsistence during the time they may remain in Southampton, waiting

arrangements for this purpose. Amongst the refugees is the

distinguished Hungarian Lieut. General Loisar Messaros.

Preparations for another _Peace Congress_ have been made on a large

scale. In one important particular the London Congress will be

distinguished above all others; and that is, in the greater breadth of

representative character which it will acquire; for associated bodies

who have never hitherto manifested a direct interest in the peace

question are preparing to send delegates on this occasion.

The official returns of the _shipwrecks of the United Kingdom_ during

the past year, show that the average is nearly two a day; and the

amount, thus far, four vessels only propelled by steam, and six

hundred and sixty-eight sailing vessels of every description. The

difference in the number of steam and sailing vessels afloat is far

from the proportion of disasters. Navigation by steam is thus

demonstrated to be much the safest.

The 4th of July was celebrated in London with appropriate honors by

the American residents and others. Mr. George Peabody issued cards of

invitation to meet the United States Minister and Mrs. Lawrence at a

fete which he was to give in the evening, and about seven or eight

hundred persons were present, including the American families in

London, and a large proportion of the nobility and public persons in

England, by whom the idea was received with the greatest satisfaction.

The Duke of Wellington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord

Mayor, the Duke of Valencia, the Count and Countess Pulzki, Lord

Glenelg, Viscount Canning, Miss Burdett Coutts, the American Ministers

to London, St. Petersburg, and Brussels, and a great number of other

eminent persons attended, besides Catharine Hayes, Lablache, Gardoni,

and Cruvelli, who sang during the evening, and were received with more

than usual applause. The affair was one of the grandest of the season.

FRANCE.

In France the chief events of importance are connected with the

project for the revision of the Constitution. After a long struggle

the subject was given to a committee, at the head of which was De

Tocqueville. His report, as presented to the committee on the 4th of

July, had not at the last dates received when this sheet goes to

press, come before the public in an authentic form; but it is

understood that it treats of three principal points. In the first

place, M. de Tocqueville enters boldly into the question between the

republicans and monarchists. He examines with skill the pretensions of

the republic to Divine right put forward in the Commission itself by

General Cavaignac, and sustained by him with impassioned energy and an

accent of conviction which astonished the members. M. de Tocqueville

denies this pretended Divine right, and maintains that of the nation

to choose the form of government that may best suit it--a right which

is absolute, superior, and indisputable. Secondly, he is said to

oppose, by anticipation, any species of amendment which would have the

effect of confining the next Constituent Assembly within any limits,

or force on it the obligation of revising the constitution for the

sole end of ameliorating and consolidating them, and to maintain that

the Constituent Assembly should be invested with a general and

unlimited mission, in order that it may act in the plenitude of a

really constituent power; and thirdly, he is described as expressing

hopes that the Assembly will adopt the proposition accepted by the

majority of the commission; that a constituent assembly will be

chosen; that the constitution will be revised or remodelled; and in

such case that all will consider it their duty to conform to it; that

if the proposition of revision be not admitted, the constitution of

1848 shall remain as the supreme and sovereign law for all; that the

only alternative will be to maintain, until the term of a new period

of three years, the provisional form of the actual government--it

being of course understood, that, in such case, each person will feel

it his duty to conform to the constitution, and to abstain from every

act which would be tantamount to its violation. It is added that M. de

Tocqueville developes this proposition in such a manner as to oppose

_all unconstitutional candidateships_; that is, of the actual

President, the Prince de Joinville, and Ledru Rollin. The friends of

Louis Napoleon have favored the revision, in the hope that by it they

might prolong his term. Several speeches lately made by the president

have given a more favorable impression than that which he made at

Dijon. One at Poitiers, on the occasion of the opening of a railroad,

has given satisfaction to moderate men of all parties, who believe it

honest.

A bill to interdict clubs has been again adopted without any attempt

at alteration. General Aupick is announced as the new ambassador to

Spain. Count Colonna Walewski, an illegitimate son of the Emperor

Napoleon, has reached the highest round of the diplomatic ladder by

being sent as ambassador to the Court of St. James. The _Pays_

announces that the question of Abd-el-Kader's captivity is on the

point of receiving a satisfactory solution. The committee charged to

examine the bill for the ratification of the treaties of La Plata is

disposed to propose simply the ratification of those treaties. At

Charente, recently, thirty-two adult Roman Catholics of both sexes, in

the presence of a numerous congregation, in the Protestant church,

publicly abjured the Roman Catholic and embraced the Protestant faith.

A measure introduced by M. de St. Beuve in the National Assembly for a

commercial reform, by modifying the present restrictive tariff, so as

to accomplish a gradual approach to free trade, had been rejected by a

majority of 428 to 199. M. Thiers on this occasion made a great speech

against free trade, which is much criticised by the English press. The

London _Times_ calls Thiers the evil genius of France.

The most recent commercial letters received from various parts of

France represent affairs as somewhat recovering from the gloomy

appearance they wore some days since. The manufacturers have received

numerous orders for the great fair of Beaucaire, which will be held in

July. The Bank of France has announced a dividend of fifty-five francs

per share for the first half year of 1851.

ITALY.

On the evening of the 7th of May, the Count Piero Guicciardini, the

descendant of the great historian, had met in a private house in

Florence six persons whose names are given in a decree, and before the

party broke up, Count Guicciardini read and expounded a chapter of the

Gospel of St. John. At ten o'clock the house was entered by eight

gendarmes; a perquisition began, in the style now customary in

Tuscany; the depositions of the party assembled were taken down; and

as it was fully proved by such depositions that a chapter of the Bible

had been read by Count Guicciardini, the whole of the seven offenders

were straightway led to the police delegation of Santa Maria Novella,

where their arrest was signed by the delegate, and a little after

midnight they were lodged in the Bargello, or public prison. For ten

days Count Guicciardini and his companions were kept in confinement

and subjected to repeated examinations, and finally the sentence of

forced residence in different parts of the Tuscan Maremme was passed

on each of the accused. This illustration of the liberality of the

Roman Catholic Church--though in perfect keeping with its perpetual

policy--has produced a profound sensation. It might have escaped

without much observation but for the eminence of the parties, and the

claims made lately in England, that the Roman Catholic authorities

were as tolerant as they asked that others should be to them, in all

matters of personal rights.

The French military commandant in Rome has been exercising his

authority with great, but probably requisite severity. Two Roman

soldiers have been tried by French court martial, and executed for

riotous conduct, and seven others have been doomed to the same fate.

The Pope also has been threatened with expulsion from the Quirinal

Palace, which the above-mentioned authority thought at one time would

be essential as a military post. So far, the weak-minded holder of St.

Peter's keys has not suffered the mortification of a second forced

retreat, although, between his military guardians of France and

Austria and his own discontented subjects, his position is scarcely an

enviable one. The three young Englishmen arrested at Leghorn yet

remain imprisoned; but their real names do not appear.

GERMANY.

The military authorities of Austria give as much offence in Germany as

the French in Rome. At Hamburg, several citizens have been killed in a

fray with the Austrian soldiers, begun by the insolence of the latter.

In Hesse Cassel, the Government has been compelled to grant immunities

to the Roman Catholic clergy, scarcely compatible with the

institutions of a Protestant country, under the compulsion of Austrian

bayonets.

The Goettingen Professors have decided that the Government of Electoral

Hesse was not required by the Constitution to procure the assent of

the Chambers to the levy of taxes last year; this is the point on

which the revolutionary manifestations turned. We have not the

Constitution at hand, and cannot apprehend the grounds of this

decision, but it is singular that all the magistrates and people of

the country, who ought to have known something of their constitution,

should have unanimously held a different opinion. The Prussian

government have withdrawn the summons for the assembling of the

provincial diets, no doubt on account of the universal condemnation

excited by it. A decided schism has of late manifested itself in the

commercial policy advocated by North and South Germany. Whilst the

attempt to procure higher protective duties in the Zollverein has

continually been defeated by the liberal principals supported by

Prussia. South Germany, on the other hand, has come forward openly

with the intention to assert an independent line of action.

SPAIN.

Accounts from Madrid of the 2d July, state that M. Jose Sanchez Ocana,

director general of the public treasury, has been appointed under

secretary of state of the finance department, in the place of M.

Bordia, director general of the customs. M. Rudulfo, inspector of the

finances at Madrid, succeeded M. Ocana in the direction of the public

treasury. France, by her diplomatic agents at Madrid, strives to

influence the Spanish government in regard to a more active repression

of the slave trade in its colonies. Mr. Schoelcher adverted to the

passage of the recent speech of the Emperor of Brazil, touching the

abolition of the traffic, as meant simply to please England--"like all

other speeches from thrones, in which the design is to give a sort of

satisfaction to the foreign powers with whom friendly relations are

desirable." The amendment was rejected by 339 nays to 230 ayes.

RUSSIA.

Letters from Posen allude to an ukase which had appeared, compelling

all individuals throughout Russia and Poland to sell to the

government, within a specified period, whatever uncoined silver they

might have in their possession. An indemnity in paper money was

authorized to be given on behalf of the treasury. A body of Belgian

weavers and dyers has been engaged to go to St. Petersburg to set up

their trade. In Circassia the Russian army has met with a serious

defeat; in a battle where it had 25,000 men engaged, it lost 5,000.

AUSTRIA AND TURKEY.

The Emperor has appointed Count Rechburg Internuncio at the court of

Constantinople. Accounts from Comorn state that violent shocks of an

earthquake were felt there on the 1st. The shocks were accompanied by

violent claps of thunder. The clocks in all the church towers struck;

scarcely a single house remained uninjured; numerous chimneys fell in,

and the furniture and utensils in the rooms were overthrown and

broken. Many accidents had occurred, but providentially, not any of a

fatal nature are yet known.

_Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._

The BRITISH ASSOCIATION met this year on the second of July, at

Ipswich. Among those present we notice the names of Prince Albert, the

Prince of Canino, the Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Rosse, the Earl of

Enniskillen, the Earl of Sheffield, Lord Monteagle, Lord

Londesborough, Lord Stradbroke, Lord Rendlesham, Lord Abercorn, Lord

Alfred Paget, Lord Wrottesley, the Bishop of Oxford, Sir Charles

Lemon, Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir Henry de la

Beche, Sir Edward Cust, Sir William Jardine, Sir William Middleton,

Sir W. J. Hooker, Sir J. T. Boileau, Professors Airy, Asa Gray,

Harvey, Sedgwick, Henslow, Owen, Sylvester, Forbes, Bell, Anstead,

Phillips, and Faraday, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Dr. Hooker, and many eminent

scientific men.

* * * * *

At a recent meeting of the ASIATIC SOCIETY in London, a report of the

Oriental Translation Committee mentioned the printing of the second

volume of the _Travels of Evliva Effendi_, of the fifth volume of

_Haji Khalfae Lexicon_, and of the _Makamat_ of Hariri. The Committee

had received from Col. Rawlinson the offer of a translation of the

valuable and rare geographical work of Yakut, which it accepted, and

is about to proceed with the printing of the third and concluding

volume of M. Garcin de Tassy's _Histoire de la Litterature Hindoui et

Hindoustani_, including a Memoir on Hindustani Songs, with numerous

translations. The Report concluded with noticing the presentation of

William the Fourth's gold medal to Prof. H. H. Wilson, in

acknowledgment of his services to Oriental literature generally, and

especially in testimony of the merits of his translation of the

_Vishnu Purana_.

The annual Report of the Council gave some notice of the progress of

Babylonian and Assyrian decipherment as carried out by Colonel

Rawlinson, and now in the course of communication to the world by the

Society. The Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription was

exhibited on the table; and, in allusion to it, the Report contained a

concise _resume_ of what had been done from the information of Colonel

Rawlinson himself, who is of opinion that the inscriptions read extend

over a period of 1,000 years--from B.C. 2000 to 1000; that he has

ascertained the religion of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians to

have been strictly Astral or Sabaean; and as he finds among the gods

the names of Belus, Ninus and Semiramis, he thinks that the dynasties

given by the Greeks were, in fact, lists of mythological names. The

geography of Western Asia as it was 4,000 years ago appears to be

clearly made out. Col. Rawlinson finds a king of Cadytis, or

Jerusalem, named Kanun, a tributary of the king who built the palace

of Khursabad, warring with a Pharaoh of Egypt, and defeating his

armies on the south frontier of Palestine. The Meshec and Tubal of

Scripture were dwelling in North Syria, the Hittites held the centre

of the province, and the commercial cities of Tyre and Sidon and Gaza

and Acre flourished on the coasts. And so well does Colonel Rawlinson

find the geography made out, that he is of opinion he can identify

every province and city named in the inscriptions.

* * * * *

The last Bulletin of the GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY of Paris, opens with an

appeal to the governments of Europe and America, for the adoption of a

Common First Meridian. The author, M. Sedillor, is a high authority in

geographical science, and would trace an imaginary line in the midst

of the Ocean; designate it by some "systematic term," acceptable to

all, and bring, thus, Europe and the new world into a community of

views and interests apart from all national prejudices or pretension.

The appeal followed by a letter of M. Jomard on the same subject, and

another from the traveller Antony D'Abbadie, who prefers Mont Blanc,

or Jerusalem--"against which the Christians of America can have no

objection." Among the contents of the Bulletin, is a notice of Lieut.

Com. MacArthur's report, eighteenth December, 1850, to Professor

Bache, which has been translated entire for the _Hydrographical

Annals_, a periodical work. Mr. Squier's Observations on the Route of

the Proposed Canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua, are also

translated. There is a paper of some compass, on the various projects

and undertakings for a communication between the Oceans and a like one

on the services rendered to geography by the French and British

missionaries. Those of the German and American, who have not been less

zealous, will be duly credited and recorded, when materials can be

obtained for the purpose.

* * * * *

At the meeting for the 22nd May, of the ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE,

in London, a very interesting Greek MS. was exhibited. It is owned by

a Mr. Arden, who purchased it of an Arab near Thebes. It is nearly

four yards long, divided into pages or columns containing twenty-eight

lines, the length of which exceeds six inches, and the breadth two

inches; the whole is written in a large and clear hand, with great

accuracy, since few corrections or interpolations are visible.

Although it is difficult to assign to it the actual age, still there

seems to be every reason to conjecture that it is of the commencement

of the present era--or indeed, which is by no means improbable, that

it was written a century or two before the birth of Christ. The

delicacy of the texture of the papyrus will afford a strong

presumption in favor of the latter period; for it is well known to

Egyptologists that a coarseness and inferiority of papyrus indicate a

more recent date. The first portion of the MS. is much broken, and

presents many gaps and fragments; the end of it bears the title of an

Apology, or Defence of Lycophron. The second, or larger portion of the

MS., is much more perfect, as it contains only here and there an

hiatus, which will probably be easily restored; at its termination we

are informed that it is a Defence of the accusation of Euxenippus

against Polyeuctus. The author of these orations will, in all

likelihood, prove to be the great Athenian orator Hyperides, whose

works have been long lost. Indeed, this appears to be almost certain,

since some of the Greek lexicographers mention a speech of Hyperides

'for Lycophron,' and another 'against Polyeuctus concerning the

accusation.' But who Lycophron was, and what was the nature of the

defence for him, remain to be more amply detailed. The subject of

this second oration, however, appears to be known,--for Polyeuctus,

the Athenian orator, was accused, with Demosthenes, of receiving a

bribe from Harpalus. Moreover, the fragments of a papyrus MS. procured

a few years ago at Egyptian Thebes by Dr. Harris, lately ably edited

by Mr. Babington, at Cambridge, and proved to be parts of the oration

of Hyperides against Demosthenes, are so exceedingly similar, both in

handwriting and the papyrus, to the present MS. belonging to Mr.

Arden, that it is not improbable but that they may have been copied by

the same Greek scribe and may originally have formed one entire MS.

roll of the orations of Hyperides. A careful examination and

comparison of these interesting MSS. will, after a time, decide these

questions.

* * * * *

At a late sitting of the _Paris Academy of Medicine_, M. ORFILA, the

celebrated toxicologist, read a paper on _Nicotine_--the poison used

in the Bocarme murder. It is the essential principle of tobacco.

Virginia tobacco yields the largest proportion of _nicotine_; from

twenty pounds, were extracted four hundred _grammes_ of the poison; a

gramme is equal to 15.444 grains troy. The Maryland leaf affords about

a third of that quantity. Nicotine is nearly as powerful and rapid as

prussic acid with the animal economy. Five or six drops applied to the

tongue of a dog, killed in ten minutes. The progress which medical

jurisconsults have made recently, is so great, that poisoning by

morphine, strychnine, prussic acid, and other vegetable substances,

hitherto regarded as inaccessible to our means of investigation, may

now be detected and recognized in the most incontestable manner. M.

Ortila, in closing his notice, says: "After these results of judicial

medical investigation, the public need be under no apprehension. No

doubt intelligent and clever criminals, with a view to thwart the

surgeons, will sometimes have recourse to very active poisons little

known by the mass, and difficult of detection, but science is on the

alert, and soon overcomes all difficulty; penetrating into the utmost

depths of our organs, it brings out the proof of the crime, and

furnishes one of the greatest pieces of evidence against the guilty."

* * * * *

In the LONDON ROYAL INSTITUTION, May 23, M. Ebelman, of the Sevres

works, near Paris, being present with various specimens of the

minerals which he has produced artificially,--Mr. Faraday stated the

process and results generally. The process consists in employing a

solvent, which shall first dissolve the mineral or its constituents;

and shall further, either on its removal or on a diminution of its

dissolving powers, permit the mineral to aggregate in a crystaline

condition. Such solvents are boracic acid, borax, phosphate of soda,

phosphoric acid, &c.:--the one chiefly employed by M. Ebelman is

boracic acid. By putting together certain proportions of alumina and

magnesia, with a little oxide of crome or other coloring matter, and

fused boracic acid into a fit vessel, and inclosing that in another,

so that the whole could be exposed to the high heat of a porcelain or

other furnace, the materials became dissolved in the boracic acid; and

then as the heat was continued the boracic acid evaporated, and the

fixed materials were found combined and crystallized, and presenting

new specimens of spinel. In this way crystals having the same form,

hardness, color, specific gravity, composition, and effect on light as

the true ruby, the cymophane, and other mineral bodies were prepared,

and were in fact identical with them. Chromates were made, the emerald

and corundum crystalized, the peridot formed, and many combinations as

yet unknown to mineralogists produced.

* * * * *

At a meeting of the BERLIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, held on May 31 last,

the venerable Alexander von Humboldt made an interesting communication

upon some observations of singular _movements of fixed stars_. It

seems that at Trieste, January 17, 1851, between 7 and 8 o'clock P.M.,

before the rising of the moon, when the star Sirius was not far from

the horizon, it was seen to perform a remarkable series of eccentric

movements. It rose and sank, moved left and right, and sometimes

seemed to move in a curved line. The observers were Mr. Keune, a

student in the upper class of the gymnasium, and Mr. Thugutt, a

saddler, both certified to be reliable persons. The family of the

latter also beheld the phenomena, Mr. Keune, with his head leaned

immovably against a wall, saw Sirius rise in a right line above the

roof of a neighboring house, and immediately again sink out of sight

behind it, and then again appear. Its motions were so considerable

that for some time the beholders thought it was a lantern suspended by

a kite. It also varied in brilliancy, growing alternately brighter and

fainter, and now and then being for moments quite invisible, though

the sky was perfectly clear. As far as it is known, this phenomenon

has been remarked but twice before, once in 1799 from the Peak of

Teneriffe by Von Humboldt himself, and again nearly fifty years later,

by a well-informed and careful observer, Prince Adalbert, of Prussia.

* * * * *

"In the great Exhibition," the _Athenaeum_ says, "Daguerreotypes are

largely displayed by the French,--as might have been expected, that

country being proud of the discovery: but the examples exhibited by

the Americans surpass in general beauty of effect any which we have

examined from other countries. This has been attributed to difference

in the character of the solar light as modified by atmospheric

conditions; we are not, however, disposed to believe that to be the

case. We have certain indications that an increased intensity of light

is not of any advantage, but rather the contrary, for the production

of daguerreotypes; the luminous rays appearing to act as balancing

powers against the chemical rays. Now, this being the case, we know of

no physical cause by which the superiority can be explained,--and we

are quite disposed to be sufficiently honest to admit that the mode of

manipulation has more to do with the result than any atmospheric

influences. However this may be, the character of the daguerreotypes

executed in America is very remarkable. There are a fulness of tone

and an artistic modulation of light and shadow which in England we do

not obtain. The striking contrasts of white and black are shown

decidedly enough in the British examples exhibited in the

gallery,--but here there are coldness and hardness of outline. Within

the shadow of the eagle and the striped banner we find no lights too

white and no shadows too dark: they dissolve, as in Nature, one into

the other in the most harmonious and truthful manner,--and the result

is, more perfect pictures. The Hyalotypes or glass pictures are of a

remarkable character. They are but a modification of the processes of

Mr. Talbot and of M. Evrard as applied to glass; but the idea of

copying Nature on this material,--and, having obtained a fixed picture

of the shadowed image, of magnifying it by means of the magic lantern,

and thus producing a truthful representation of the original,--is

certainly due to the artist of Philadelphia. Many beautiful views of

the Smithsonian Institute, of the Custom-house at Philadelphia, and of

churches in several cities in the United States, show the minuteness

of the detail which can be obtained by the use of the albuminized

glass. Amongst the professed improvements Mr. Beard exhibits some

enamelled daguerreotypes, in which the permanence of the picture is

secured by a lacquer."

* * * * *

In the ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, in London, the President,

regretting the undignified controversies respecting the rise and

course of the Nile which had taken place, unhesitatingly expressed his

conviction that no European traveller, from Bruce downwards, had yet

seen the source of the true White Nile. Concerning this, we may still

exclaim "_Ignotum, plus notus, Nile, per ortum._"

* * * * *

Experiments with chloroform as a propelling power, in the place of

steam, are now making in the port of L'Orient; and there is reason to

hope, from the success which has already attended them, that they will

result in causing a considerable saving to be effected in cost and in

space.

* * * * *

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE will hold its annual meeting this

year at Dijon. The Congress will commence on the 14th of September.

_Recent Deaths._

GENERAL M. ARBUCKLE, U.S.A., died on the 11th of June, at Fort Smith.

He was about 75 years of age, and had been nearly fifty years in the

army, and twenty on the Arkansas frontier. At the time of his death,

he was commander of the 7th Military Department of the United States

Army, and had held that station for several years, and was peculiarly

calculated for the office, being thoroughly acquainted with the

Indians, and Indian character, he always had their confidence, and by

that means, kept up and maintained friendly relations with them on

behalf of the United States. The St. Louis _Republican_ remarks that,

"as a man, Gen. ARBUCKLE was honest and humane, loved and respected by

every person with whom he had intercourse. No one pursued a more

straight-forward course in all transactions. He was strictly

economical in expenditures for the Government. His whole mind was

engrossed with the present expedition of the 5th Infantry to the

Brazos, and on the frontier of Texas, and he gave orders and

directions for conducting, it as long as he was able to converse."

* * * * *

The CHEVALIER PARISOT DE GUYMONT, who belonged to the family of

Lavalette, the illustrious Grand Master of the Order of Malta, of

which the chevalier was one of the few surviving knights, has just

died in the convent of St. Jean de Catane, in Sicily, to which the

directing chapter of that celebrated order had retired. He

distinguished himself in the expedition which the last grand master

sent against Algiers towards the end of the eighteenth century; and

General Bonaparte, when he took possession of Malta, demanded to see

M. de Guymont, and received him with marked distinction. He was in the

seventy-seventh year of his age.

* * * * *

SIR J. GRAHAM DALZELL, BART., died on the seventeenth of June in

Edinburgh, aged seventy-seven years. He was president of the Society

for promoting Useful Arts in Scotland, vice-president of the African

institute of Paris, and author of several works on science and

history, and of various articles in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.

* * * * *

The widow of THOMAS SHERIDAN, died in London on the ninth of June. She

was the author of _Carwell_, a very striking story illustrating the

inequalities of punishment in the laws against forgery. In a later

novel, _Aims and Ends_, the same feminine and truthful spirit showed

itself in lighter scenes of social life, observing keenly, and

satirizing kindly. Mrs. Sheridan wrote always with ease,

unaffectedness, and good-breeding, her books every where giving

evidence of the place she might have taken in society if she had not

rather desired to refrain from mingling with it, and keep herself

comparatively unknown. After her husband's early death she had devoted

herself in retirement to the education of her orphan children; when

she re-appeared in society it seemed to be solely for the sake of her

daughters, on whose marriages she again withdrew from it; and to none

of her writings did she ever attach her name. Into the private sphere

where her virtues freely displayed themselves, and her patient yet

energetic life was spent, it is not permitted us to enter; but we

could not pass without this brief record what we know to have been a

life as much marked by earnestness, energy, and self-sacrifice, as by

those qualities of wit and genius which are for ever associated with

the name of Sheridan. Three daughters survive her, and one son--Lady

Dufferin, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Seymour, and Mr. Brinsley

Sheridan, the member of Parliament for Shaftesbury.

* * * * *

From Stockholm we hear of the death of Mr. ANDRE CARLSSON, Bishop of

Calmar, and author of numerous and important works on philology,

theology and jurisprudence. He occupied at one time the chair of Greek

language and literature at the University of Lund, and was, say the

Swedish papers, in his place in the Diet, a champion of religious

liberty and parliamentary reform. He has died at the great age of 94.

* * * * *

Poland has lost a writer of distinction, chiefly on geographical

subjects, in the person of Count STANISLAUS PLATER. He had long been

eminent both in society and in literature.

* * * * *

GENERAL JAMES MILLER died in Temple, New-Hampshire, on the 7th of

July, of paralysis, aged 76 years. He was born in Peterboro, N. H.,

and bred to the profession of the law. In 1810 he entered the Army,

and served with distinction throughout the last war with Great

Britain. He rose rapidly from the rank of captain to that of major

general. He was present at Tippecanoe, under Gen. Harrison, but was

prevented by sickness from taking part in the battle. He rendered

eminent services in the battles of Chippeway, Bridgewater, and Lundy's

Lane, making himself conspicuous by his courageous and intrepid

conduct. It was at the last named battle that he is said to have

uttered the renowned declaration, "I'll try, sir," when asked if he

could storm an important and nearly impregnable position of the enemy.

Gen. Miller was subsequently made Governor of the Territory of

Arkansas. Afterwards he was collector of the port of Salem, which post

he resigned in 1840. He is the "old soldier collector" referred to in

the introduction to Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_.

* * * * *

The celebrated Polish General UMINSKI died at Wiesbaden on the 16th of

June. He was one of the most prominent actors in the last Polish

Revolution, but for several years had lived in great retirement at

Wiesbaden. He was born in the year 1780, in the Grand Duchy of Posen.

As early as 1794 he commenced his military career, as a volunteer

under Kosciusko. When the Poles were summoned to new efforts for

freedom by Dombrowski, in 1806, Uminski was among the first to take up

arms. He formed a Polish Guard of Honor for Napoleon, fought at

Dantzick, received a wound at Dirschau, where he was taken prisoner

and sentenced to death by a Prussian Court Martial. His sentence was

not executed, however, as Napoleon threatened reprisals. In the war

against Austria he commanded Dombrowski's advanced guard, was made

Colonel, and formed the 10th. hussar-regiment, which signalized itself

at Masaisk, in 1812, and at whose head he was the first to enter

Moscow. In the retreat, he saved the life of Poniatowski. At the

battle of Leipsic, where he acted as Brigadier General, he was again

wounded and taken prisoner. After the dissolution of the national army

of Poland, he entered into the Polish-Russian service but soon

obtained his discharge, and lived in retirement in Posen, though

without intermitting his efforts for the freedom of Poland. In the

year 1821 he helped to found a patriotic union, was arrested after

accession of Nicholas I, and in the year 1826 sentenced to six years'

imprisonment in the fortress of Glogau. Escaping from this in 1831, he

went to Warsaw, and took part as a common soldier in the battle of

Wawre. The next day he was made General of Division. On the 25th of

February he beat Diebitsch at Grodno, and distinguished himself in

several other battles. Outlawed and hung in effigy at Kosen, he found

an asylum in France. The remainder of his subsequent life he passed in

Wiesbaden. Uminski was also known as a writer on military affairs.

Those who knew him in the latter years of his exile, are loud in their

praises of the sweetness, benevolence, and dignity of his character.

He will be remembered for his devotion to Polish liberty, and the

people, who in future times shall struggle for the same boon, will

gain new encouragement from his glorious example.

* * * * *

VISCOUNT MELVILLE died on the tenth of June. He was in his eightieth

year, having been born in 1771. In 1809, he (then the Right Honorable

Robert Dundas), was President of the Board of Trade under the Perceval

administration. He succeeded his father in 1811, and, in 1812, when

Lord Liverpool assumed the reins, he became first Lord of the

Admiralty, which office he held during that long administration which

ceased in April, 1827, by the death of the Premier. Mr. Canning having

been called to power, Lord Melville retired with the majority of his

former colleagues, which caused some surprise at the time, as he was

favorable to the claims of the Catholics, which was understood to

constitute the bond of the new administration. The Canning

administration had a brief career, and that of Lord Goderich, the

present Earl of Ripon, which attempted to carry on affairs after the

death of Canning, was still more brief. On the Duke of Wellington

becoming Prime Minister, early in 1822, Lord Melville resumed his

former office, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and continued until

the breaking up of the Tory Administration, and the advent of the

Reform Ministry of Earl Grey, in November, 1830. He then ended his

official career, but for several years attended occasionally in the

House of Lords, but he chiefly resided at the family seat.

* * * * *

Mr. DYCE SOMBRE died in London, July 1. His history is very generally

known. He was understood to be the son of a German adventurer in

India, of the name of Summer, who espoused the late Begum Oomroo. All

manner of wild and scandalous stories are afloat as to the life of

this woman and the death of her husband. After her death, Mr. Dyce

Sombre came to Europe, and first made himself remarkable, in Italy, by

the extraordinary black marble monument which he caused to be executed

and sent to India in memory of his benefactress. His arrival in

England, with a reputation of almost fabulous wealth, attracted much

notice. He became one of the feted lions of the season, and ultimately

married, in 1840, Mary Anne, daughter of the Earl St. Vincent. A

separation soon took place, and the legal proceedings consequent on

this ill-starred marriage, followed by those adopted for the purpose

of establishing Mr. Dyce Sombre's lunacy--were long matters of public

talk and universal notoriety. His attempt to enter public life was

seconded by the "worthy and enlightened" electors of Sudbury, who sent

him to Parliament, from whence he was speedily ejected on

petition--the borough being soon afterwards disfranchised. For the

last few years Mr. Sombre has resided on the Continent, to escape the

effects of the decision of the Court of Chancery in his case--a

decision against which he had come over to petition when he was seized

with his fatal illness. In consequence of his death in a state of

lunacy, his money in the funds, railway shares, and other property, of

the annual value of L11,000, will become divisible between Captain

Troup and General Soldoli, the husbands of his two sisters, who are

next of kin. An additional sum, producing L4,000 a year, will also

fall to their families on the death of Mrs. Dyce Sombre.

* * * * *

BISHOP MEDANO, of Buenos Ayres, died in the second week of April. He

was 83 years old.

* * * * *

The EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, one of the most notable of the members of the

House of Lords, died at his country residence in Dorsetshire, on the

2d of June, aged eighty-four years. Though neither an orator nor a

statesman, he was one of the most remarkable personages of the age in

which he lived. His position as a public servant was quite peculiar;

and his character, though it could not be called eccentric, had little

in common with the world around him. CROPLY ASHLEY COOPER, was the

second son of the fourth Lord Shaftesbury. That Lord Shaftesbury who

became Chancellor in the reign of Charles II. was the first peer in

the Cooper family, and under the title of Lord Ashley was a member of

the Cabinet well known by the name of "the Cabal" To him we are

indebted for the Habeas Corpus Act, at least for being its chief

promoter; and he is likewise entitled to the gratitude of posterity

for having introduced a measure to render the Judges independent of

the crown. The third Earl--grandson of the first--was the celebrated

author of the _Characteristics_. The fourth was his son; the fifth and

sixth Earls were his grandsons; the former of these dying without male

issue in 1811, the earldom devolved on the deceased, who was born in

London on the 21st of December, 1768. From Winchester, where he was

contemporaneous with Sidney Smith, and Archbishop Howley, he in due

course went to Christchurch, where he passed his time as most young

men of rank do at college, and graduated with quite as much credit as

was then usually attained by the son of an Earl; after which he made

those excursions on the continent of Europe that our ancestors were

accustomed to call "the grand tour;" and all these operations he

brought to a close before he had completed his twenty-second year. His

next step was to get into Parliament, and a seat in the House of

Commons was obtained for him in the usual way by family influence,

Dorchester having had the advantage of calling him its member from the

thirtieth of January, 1790, for a period exceeding twenty-one years.

This was pretty good experience in the more active branch of the

Legislature, though the body that elected him was of that small and

quiet order of constituencies that do not greatly overburden their

members with the labors of representation. Mr. Cropley Ashley Cooper

had, therefore, had a long apprenticeship to political life, when, by

the death of his elder brother, on the fourteenth of May, 1811, he

succeeded to the peerage as sixth Earl of Shaftesbury.

The Earl was nearly forty years of age when, upon the death of Fox,

the Tories recovered their long possession of office, and among their

good deeds may be reckoned their appointment of Lord Shaftesbury, then

Mr. Cooper, to the office of Clerk of the Ordnance. To the duties of

his department he applied himself with marvellous zeal, and it was

always his own opinion that he there first acquired those habits of

industry and method which rendered him one of the most efficient

members of the Upper House. When, on the death of his elder brother,

he reached the dignity of the peerage, he thought it necessary to

resign the clerkship of the Ordnance, though his private fortune was

scarcely sufficient for a man encumbered with an earldom and a large

family. He took his seat as a peer in June, 1811, and it was not until

November, 1814, that he became permanently the Chairman of Committees;

the duties of which place were well done for nearly forty years by

"old" Lord Shaftesbury, who was never old when business pressed.

Strong common sense, knowledge of the statute law, and above all,

uncompromising impartiality, made him an autocrat in his department.

When once he heard a case, and deliberately pronounced judgment,

submission almost invariably followed. A man of the largest experience

as a Parliamentary agent has been heard to say that he remembered only

one case in which the House reversed a decision of Lord Shaftesbury;

and on that occasion it became necessary to prevail on the Duke of

Wellington to speak in order to overcome the "old Earl." It would not

be easy to cite many instances of men who have taken as active part in

the business of a deliberative assembly after the age of 75; but the

labors of Lord Shaftesbury were continued beyond that of fourscore. To

all outward seeming he was nearly as efficient at one period of his

life as at another. By the time he had reached the age of

fifty,--which was about half-way through the fifteen years that Lord

Liverpool's Ministry held the government,--Lord Shaftesbury's

knowledge of his duties as chairman to the Lords was complete, and

then he appeared to settle down in life with the air, the habits, the

modes of thought and action, natural to old age. Although there are

few men now alive whose experience would enable them to contrast his

performance of official duties with the manner in which they were

discharged by his predecessor, yet, even in the absence of any thing

like _data_, there seems to be a general impression that the House of

Lords never could have had a more efficient chairman. He was certainly

a man of undignified presence, of indistinct and hurried speech, of

hasty and brusque manner, the last person whom a superficial observer

would think of placing in the chair of the greatest senate that the

world has ever seen; yet it cannot be said that their lordships were

ever wrong in their repeated elections of Lord Shaftesbury; for in the

formal business of committees he rarely allowed them to make a

mistake, while he was prompt as well as safe in devising the most

convenient mode of carrying any principle into practical effect. He

was no theorist; there was nothing of the speculative philosopher in

the constitution of his mind; and he therefore readily gained credit

for being what he really was, an excellent man of business. It is well

known that the Lords, sitting in committee, are less prone to run riot

than the other House; still it required no small ability to keep them

always in the right path, as was the happy practice of Lord

Shaftesbury. In dealing with minute distinctions and mere verbal

emendations, a deliberative assembly occasionally loses its way, and

members sometimes ask, "What is it we are about?" This was a question

which Lord Shaftesbury usually answered with great promptitude and

perspicuity, rarely failing to put the questions before their

Lordships in an unmistakable form. Another valuable quality of Lord

Shaftesbury as a chairman consisted in his impatience of prosy,

unprofitable talk, of which, doubtless, there is comparatively little

in the Upper House; but even that little he labored to make less by

occasionally reviving attention to the exact points at issue, and

sometimes, by an excusable manoeuvre, shutting out opportunity for

useless discussion. When he sat on the woolsack as speaker, in the

absence of the Lord Chancellor, he deported himself after the manner

of Chancellors; but when he got into his proper element at the table

of the house, nothing could be more rapid than his evolutions; no

hesitation, no dubiety, nor would he allow any one else to pause or

doubt. Often has he been heard to say, in no very gentle tones, "Give

me in that clause _now_;"--"That's enough;"--"It will do very well as

it is;"--"If you have anything further to propose, move at

once;"--"Get through the bill now, and bring up that on the third

reading." He always made their Lordships feel that, come what might,

it was their duty to "get through the bill;" and so expeditious was

the old Earl, that he would get out of the chair, bring up his report,

and move the House into another committee in the short time that

sufficed for the Chancellor to transfer himself from the woolsack to

the Treasury bench and back again.

* * * * *

Mr. THOMAS WRIGHT HILL, eminent in England for some of the most

important improvements that have been made in the means of education

during this century, died on the 9th of June, at the age of

eighty-eight. Hazelwood School, near Birmingham, established by Mr.

Hill, was the most successful, as it was the first large experiment as

to the practicability of governing boys by other principles than that

of terror, of extending the range of scholastic acquirements beyond a

superficial knowledge of the learned languages, and of making the

acquisition of sound knowledge not only a duty but a delight. The

views of Mr. Hill were set forth in _Plans for the Government and

Liberal Instruction of Boys in large numbers, drawn from Experience_,

first published in 1823; and a very elaborate paper in the _Edinburgh

Review_ of Jan. 1825, brought the system into general notice.

* * * * *

The _London Builder_ contains a brief notice of MELCHIOR BOISSEREE,

brother to Sulpize Boisseree, whose death is much regretted throughout

Germany. It was so far back as the year 1804, that three young men,

citizens of Cologne, conceived the idea of collecting and

resuscitating the mediaeval art-relics of the Rhine-lands. But what

was, probably, but contemplated as a provincial undertaking, soon

attracted the eyes of Europe, and became a great fact of modern

art-history. When, about 1808, Sulpize Boisseree determined to devote

himself entirely to the work on the Cologne Cathedral, Melchior and

his brother Bertram continued the research and collection of ancient

paintings. But already in 1810, the old pictures had outgrown the

scanty spaces appropriable to them at Cologne. They were transferred

first to Heidelberg, and in 1819 the three brothers migrated with them

to Stuttgardt, where the king afforded room to this unique gathering

of mediaeval art. It was Melchior who chiefly attended to the

restoration of the pictures, and enriched the collection during his

travels in the Netherlands, in 1812 and 1813. Having found some of the

pictures of Hemling and Memling, it was he who first attracted notice

to these excellent, hitherto hardly known artists. In 1827 the

collection was sold to Ludwig of Bavaria, and as the Pinakotheka

(where they were to be placed) was not ready, the pictures were

conveyed to Schleissheim. In this retirement, Melchior Boisseree

devoted his whole attention to the art of glass painting, which at

that time was nigh considered as lost. If now such great things are

accomplished at Munich in this department of Art, it was Melchior

(conjointly with his brother Bertram) who paved the way by this

collection of old specimens, seen with astonishment by travellers from

the whole of Europe. When Bertram had died (about 1830), Melchior

joined his brother Sulpize at Bonn, where Melchior, in the prosecution

of his favored Art-studies, concluded his life in serene quiet and

contentment.

* * * * *

In the death of CHRISTIAN TIECK, German sculpture has lost one of its

most illustrious ornaments, a man of rare intelligence, of long

experience, and of profound artistic cultivation. He was born in

Berlin, on the 14th of August, 1776, and early destined for a

sculptor. The poetic genius and rare qualities of his brother Lewis

Tieck, the poet, his elder by three years, and the graceful artistic

and literary accomplishments of a sister, afterward the Baroness

Knooring, inspired the young sculptor with the warmest interest in the

then young and hopeful German literature and art. This taste he never

lost. Perhaps no artist, so distinguished as an artist, was ever so

devoted to various study, to the last moment of his life.

In 1797, he went to Paris as Royal Pensioner, and although a sculptor,

entered David's studio, and in the year 1800 took the prize for

sculpture. In 1801 he returned to Berlin, and his distinguished talent

was acknowledged. Goethe immediately summoned him to Weimar, and

employed him in the adorning of the Ducal palace, and in the moulding

of a series of busts. Of this latter an idealized head of Goethe and

of the philologist Frederic August Wolf, are the best. The young Tieck

continued in the closest correspondence with his brother, who was then

pursuing his poetical studies at Jena and Dresden, and they went with

Rumohr to Italy, in the year 1805, and there by his beautiful busts,

won the friendship of William Von Humboldt, a man of the most delicate

and accurate artistic taste, as well as of the noblest character and

intellectual ability. Madame de Stael invited Tieck to execute

sculptures at Coppet, for the Neckar family, and in 1809 the Prince

Royal of Bavaria, Louis, selected Tieck to mould the busts for the

projected Walhalla. He did them, and in 1812 passed into Switzerland.

He lived in Zurich, where Rauch was then engaged upon his noble work,

the reclining statue of Queen Louisa, now at Charlottenburg, and a

warm friendship was formed between the sculptors. In 1819 he returned

to Berlin, was elected into the Senate of the Academy, and appointed

Professor by the Grand Duke of Weimar. He then quietly devoted himself

to his art, and Berlin is beautiful with Tieck's sculptures. Named, in

1830 director of the Gallery of Sculpture, he did not relax his

artistic activity, and after a long illness he died gently in the

spring of his year, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

His elder brother Lewis, the most deservedly famous of the living

illustrations of German literature, the only worthy translator of

Shakspeare, the most genial friend, the most single-hearted of poets,

whom the King honors and who loved Novalis--now seventy-eight years

old, awaits in continued and patiently endured illness the gentle

guiding of death to his best friend and brother.

_Ladies' Summer Fashions._

[Illustration]

The strong and superb stuffs of winter are quite superseded by ball

dresses, at the various watering places. The _elegantes_ seek

_toilettes_ which, without being rich, are remarkable for lightness

and tasteful patterns. We commend a white mousseline dress, with three

flounces, simply hemmed; a long sash of ribbon of colored taffeta;

natural flowers in the hair and on the front of the dress; a dress of

colored taffeta, white or straw ground, or blue or pink ground; these

stuffs are striped, or running and small patterns, or great branches

with detached bouquets. Bareges are also much worn, with white ground

sprinkled with little rose-buds; silk barege, with wreaths of flowers,

are newer. The shape of the bodies of evening dresses has not

undergone much change. _Berthes_ are still worn, forming a point in

front, only varying in the disposition of the ornaments, interspersed

with small ribbons or lace and mousseline. Natural flowers will be

worn for headdresses and bouquets. Walking dresses are much in vogue

of bareges and mousseline, the body skirted, open in front, and lower

down than in winter. We must mention a new dress, named _Albanaise_,

made of barege. It is of several shades, but the most _recherche_ are

_gris poussiere_, or dust gray. Five dull silk stripes begin from the

bottom of the dress; then an intervening space and four other stripes;

another space and, to finish, three more stripes ending right in the

belt, always diminishing in size. We have also seen a jaconet dress,

embroidered _a l'Anglaise_ as an apron to the waist; the body

embroidered at the edge flat, as well as in the skirts and sleeves;

and three knots of blue taffeta fastened the bodice. For the country,

dresses of Chinese nankeen and Persian jaconet are worn; and to

protect from the sun, a kind of hood, of similar stuff. There are a

great many black lace _schales_, embroidered muslins, printed barege,

square or long, with cashmere patterns.

The scarf _mantelet_ is also much in fashion, and the article which

permits of the most frequent change; a point scarcely perceptible in

the middle of the back makes it still more graceful. It is made in all

shades, but the most _comme-il-faut_ are black; it is more suitable,

and sets off the freshness of the dress. It is trimmed with lace,

fringe, or net, covered with small velvet dots. We have seen some

quite covered with common embroidery; others embroidered with

arabesques intermingled with braid and silk, and black jet.

For the seaside there are also worn many _mantelets_, which remind us

of the winter by their shape; but the materials are somewhat lighter,

chiefly of thin summer cloth, or felt of gray shades.

The _Promenade Dress_, on the preceding page, is of a rich plain

chocolate-colored silk, made perfectly simple. Pardessus of a

damson-colored brocaded silk, the lower part of which, as well as the

large sleeves, being decorated with a magnificent double fringe, the

under and deepest being of black, and the upper composed of long silk

tassels, put at equal distances. Leghorn bonnet, trimmed with pink

silk, cut the width of a broad ribbon, and pinked at the edge; the

interior having a fulling of the pink silk encircling the face, with

brides to match.

Coarse straw _chapeaux_, though principally intended for the country,

are employed, though not much, for morning _neglige_, in town, and

will be very much in request for the watering-places; they are of the

_capote_ form, in open-work, and lined with taffeta, of one of the

colors of the ribbon that trims them. The ribbon is always plaided,

and the most fashionable has a great variety of colors; the knots are

large, and formed of several _coques_, divided in the middle by a

torsade of ribbons; some are decorated with ribbons only, but small

flowers and foliage may be employed to trim the interior of the brim.

Fancy _chapeaux_ are composed of bands of _paille dentelle_,

alternating with rose-colored taffeta _biais_, &c. Rice straw is also

employed a good deal for fancy _chapeaux_ that are formed of more than

one material.

The following figures are copied from Parisian fashion plates for

1811. The shortness of the frocks should certainly satisfy the most

extreme innovators of the present time.

[Illustration: LADIES' FASHIONS IN PARIS FORTY YEARS AGO.]